“HATFIELD RAIL –“
Then their car tipped to the side as well.
35
Mormons were everywhere in Boise.
It wasn’t an exaggeration or a condemnation, it was just a fact. Members of the Latter-day Saint church comprised about one in three people in the area. And, truth be told, Ken rather liked it that way. The LDS kids were less likely to turn up at class stoned, hungover, or “accidentally pregnant” (no kids, he had learned early, ever showed up and said they were “purposely pregnant”). Not that all LDS kids were angels – they weren’t – but they did have a lower tendency to cause trouble on average.
A result of this demographic makeup was that there was a lot of media coverage given to All Things Mormon. If an LDS church leader did something noteworthy, you could bet it would be covered at six p.m. on KBOI or KTVB – network affiliates who wouldn’t have given such items even a ten-second spot in areas like Los Angeles or New York.
So when a pair of Mormon missionaries in England were on a train that derailed, it was big news. Bigger still because one of the missionaries was actually from Caldwell, only about half an hour from Boise.
“The Hatfield rail crash” got coverage on TV, radio, newspapers. For weeks it was all anyone could talk about – either the “miracle” that the two young men hadn’t been killed, the fascinating details of the crash, or (in the case of a few very strange and bitter people Ken knew) whispered accusations that it was all part of a Mormon Conspiracy to bring down rail traffic in Europe.
The train was going almost one hundred-twenty miles per hour when a section of the track gave way. The back cars derailed completely, breaking into three sections as they skidded away from the rails.
But in the entire length, only four people were killed. Seventy injured, but only four died.
That was one of the things Ken tried to fix in his mind as the boxcar tilted beneath him. He heard screaming, wondered for a moment if it was Aaron.
No, Aaron doesn’t scream. Must be me.
The boxcar tilted so far to one side that Ken was certain it was going to slide sideways – either roll completely to its side or at the very least jump the tracks and gash twin furrows in the ground as the wheels went from solid track to comparatively soft ground.
Then the car slammed back the way it had come, bouncing Ken’s head against the metal again. Showers of sparks flew, and he couldn’t be sure if they were real or just something his brain was creating as a sort of mute protest to everything it had been forced to deal with of late.
The sound – the grating, shearing sound of train cars separating and metal being torn asunder – rose. Shifted. Now the high-pitched whine of air –
(Automatic air brakes?)
– mingled with the even higher scream of steel dragging on steel. The thud-thump-thuds that had been bouncing Ken and Aaron only a fraction of an instant before smoothed out.
Slowed.
Ken held to the fact that only four people had been killed in the Hatfield rail crash.
Held to that, and to one other thing.
The train slowed. He could feel it hitching to a stop below him, gears grinding from somewhere ahead. Brakes engaged sporadically up and down what was left of the line.
The train slowed.
Stopped.
Ken wanted to lay there. Just lay there and stare into the sky that was somehow untouched by what had happened.
But he didn’t have the time. He had to see if this was another Hatfield.
He sat up. Groaned. But didn’t let himself shut his eyes or even wince.
He had to see.
36
If this had been anything other than a freight train, already weighed down by a half-mile of cars and who-knew how much cargo, Ken figured he would already have died. If they’d been going much faster than they had been, he and Aaron no doubt would have been flung off the top of the boxcar when the train derailed. And then they would have hit the graveled ground on either side of the tracks, suffered lacerations and abrasions and broken bones that would have killed them quickly if not instantly.
So it was a blessing that he could sit up at all.
That was he told himself.
But it sounded false. Hard to believe when he managed to sit up and take stock of the destruction behind them.
The train was a mile-long range of twisted metal and shattered cargo. Some of the closer cars had broken open and spilled contents all around the now-warped tracks. Ken saw what looked like grain spilling out of one boxcar, silver boxes that might have once been electronics scattered around another.
One of the cars – a cylindrical length of steel – had split open and was very clearly leaking some kind of dark fluid. Ken couldn’t tell at this distance what it was – could have been molasses or corn oil or some kind of radioactive explosive waste for all he knew.